Greetings Designers, Engineers & Entrepreneurs,
We hope you all have started 2022 in the best possible way and that there are many nice things you can be looking forward to this year! One of which: Good Company will leave Early Access in a few months! We still have a few milestones to tackle, but we are getting more and more excited about that...
But today it's time for yet another Good To Know, and it's a special one. Instead of giving you an overview on what has happened during the development of the past weeks or months, we would like to take you further back in time for a start...
I had a dream
Fun Fact: the initial idea for Good Company was actually born in the head of Dominik, Co-Founder of Chasing Carrots, one night in August 2017. He told the team about it while we were having some beers after a long gamescom day in Cologne: "An employees-focused business simulation evolving about automation, where your character is active in the game world and delegates tasks as the game progresses! What do you think?" We thought that it was great and started working on early prototypes shortly after.
Screenshot from an early visualization video we created for Good Company
Kill your darlings
Game development is full of trial and error, especially in the first few months.
"Hey, how about this: ....?" "Wow, nice, let's do this!" [enter a variable timeframe here] later: "Well, would anyone object if we change this?" "Well, now that you say it...".
Change is important, and our team eventually identified, what worked and what didn't. Having a trusted community brings another dynamic to that process, of course, but that's something for later. Let's now have a look at a couple of parts of Good Company that we decided to abandon for various reasons...
Filofaxes like this were quite popular in the 1970s, where Good Company is roughly set. We were quite fond of the idea of using it as a key interface to list and manage items. At first. Though the more we dove into our vision for the game, the clearer it became that having an inventory blocking the view and being rather inflexible to handle, wouldn't be a promising approach.
Also true to the spirit of Good Company's setting were old school computers. Ours here, powered by RobOS v1.2, was intended as a work environment for managing organization, finances, and other daily tasks of a company boss. Aside from that, its physical buttons all served a purpose. A real treat, but it had to go at some point. Partly due to the fact that we didn't want players to be separated too much from the rest of what's going on in the game. RIP, RobOS!
Employees shouldn't only be working, right? They need their space to rest and relax. How awesome would it be to give them such a place, like, a comfy kitchen! But with ongoing development, Good Company got to focus more and more on automation and working processes, so we decided to cut lunch breaks. Luckily, employees haven't complained so far.
Ah, old Shelley! The player character's grandmother (and one-time inventor herself) was supposed to take a central role in the early versions of the tutorial in Good Company. And for our gamescom showcase build in 2018 she actually did. When another kind of cast got developed to support the campaign mode, we felt it was time for Shelley to retire, and she herself was not too unhappy about this chance.
Not exactly an in-game asset, but worth a mention, too. We wanted to push the world building early on, since that also served for representing Good Company itself on social media, for instance. What could a 70s/80s world look like, where robots were about to slowly become a common element of society? Well, just read "The Good Stuff", where we expanded this notion in a short newspaper series. It was lots of fun but took too much effort to keep up regularly for our small team, as the game itself grew.
Now that's a special one, our intro trailer for Carrot Affairs, our (bi)weekly development stream on Twitch! Before Early Access (as well as a short time in) we did this to show curious members of our community what we have been working on for Good Company. A changing mix of Carrots played the game, talked about content, or even let viewers watch while we were creating new stuff for the game. Alas, this is another format we had to take an undefined break from, the more complex Good Company's development got. But here's the good news: you can still watch a few archived episodes here!
We hope you've enjoyed this little trip down the memory lane! But of course we don't want to leave without giving you at least a few hints about what we are working on now.
New Year's Resolution
While we can't share an exact release date for Good Company's goldmaster yet, there are some interesting things we are working on until feature freeze. Let's have a look (WIP, btw)!
Loans
Profit is an essential factor in becoming a successful entrepreneur, obviously. But there's the saying 'You have to spend money to make money!', and sometimes you have invested so thoroughly that, well, your finances are touching the reds. Luckily, just like in the real world, banks are there for you. They help you out with a loan which you pay back, eventually. With interest, of course. In Good Company, you will be able to do the same. One difference though: no discussion with your banks, no arguing, no bribes. You need a loan, you get one. Invest it wisely, pay it back, and everything's going to be ok.
Business Expansion
In Good Company, we want to give you many tools to build an awesome machinery of production. One obvious challenge is to tweak its efficiency on many levels. Company Goals, Employee Skills, Policies, Business Development - all these can have positive impacts and, with Business Expansion, you will have a late-game-focused feature at your disposal. This new board contains various 'projects' that you can unlock for certain costs. In return, your company gains global buffs that can stack. So you can gradually ramp up parameters like Production Speed, Crafting Luck, and Analysis Efficiency on a global level - if you can afford the costs.
In-game Manual
There's a lot to learn in Good Company and we have made sure the tutorial that accompanies the Campaign provides an entertaining approach. However, there are many, many details to consider and some players prefer to stick to Freeplay Mode. That's why we are overhauling the In-game Manual. It will contain the whole spectrum of useful information, searchable, understandable, and ready whenever you need it!
Multiplayer
If you made it this far down the post, you might have gotten sweaty hands... "What about the Multiplayer Mode?!?!" We haven't forgotten about that feature, of course. In fact, we've been working on it for quite a while. The foundation has been laid out, which is an enormous thing in itself. The architecture and having it communicate over the platforms Good Company is available on, each with its specific requirements. But we are getting there! First tests have shown good results, a set of important UI elements have been put into place. Needless to say, this big feature will take quite some time, including balancing and testing. We want to ensure that the Multiplayer Mode is as fun and stable as possible. Rest assured, we'll keep you updated on that topic.
Phew. Quite a lot to take in, right? Thank you for bearing with us so far. Not only reading this post but for your outstanding support, super-friendly exchange, and highly valuable feedback throughout Good Company's Early Access. We will do our best to push the game over the finishing line as soon as possible and as polished as possible.
If you want to get in touch, about questions, input, anything, don't hesitate! Hop over to our central hub or share your inquiry right below this post!
Take care and be safe!
Your Chasing Carrots